MY GARDEN OF 
DREAMS 




ABRAM • L1NWOOD ■ URBAN 



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MY GARDEN OF DREAMS 

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE VOICE OF THE GARDEN 

IN PREPARATION 

GARDEN PHILOSOPHY 



MY GARDEN OF DREAMS 



MY GARDEN OF 
DREAMS 



BY 

ABRAM LINWOOD URBAN 

/! 

WITH DECORATIONS BY 

GRACE LILLIAN URBAN 



PHILADELPHIA 

THOMAS MEEHAN & SONS 
1913 




AUTHOR'S EDITION 
ILLUSTRATED 



Copyright, 1913 
By Thomas Meehan & Sons 
Germantown, Pa. 



To My Children 
with the hope that their vlsions may pass into 
Beautiful Dreams 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE GATEWAY 13 

A GARDEN ENCLOSED i 7 

ONE'S OWN GARDEN 27 

THE GARDEN GLORIOUS 37 

THE POETICAL GARDEN S i 

THE FESTIVAL OF THE SIGHT 61 

THE YOUTHERIE OF THE YEAR 71 

THE WHITE ROSE BUSH 81 

A STALK OF MIGNONETTE 93 

A CLUSTER OF LILIES 101 

A DREAM OF BEAUTY in 

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 121 

AUTUMN DREAMS 131 

MY GARDEN IN WINTER 141 

ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

FRONTISPIECE Facing Title Page 

A GARDEN ENCLOSED 16 

ONE'S OWN GARDEN 26 

THE GARDEN GLORIOUS 36 

THE POETICAL GARDEN 50 

THE FESTIVAL OF THE SIGHT . 60 

THE YOUTHERIE OF THE YEAR 70 

THE WHITE ROSE BUSH 80 

THE COMMON FLOWERS 92 

A CLUSTER OF LILIES 100 

A DREAM OF BEAUTY no 

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 120 

AUTUMN DREAMS 130 

MY GARDEN IN WINTER 140 



The garden mystically ... a 
place of spiritual repose, stillness, 
peace, refreshment, delight. 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 



A GARDEN 
ENCLOSED 



A GARDEN 
ENCLOSED 



A GARDEN ENCLOSED 

In his "Song of Songs" Solomon sings of 
"a garden enclosed/' Into such a garden 
Tennyson's Maud was called by her lover. 

Andrew Marvel speaks of "green thought 
in a green shade" — fancies of the mind in the 
lovely quiet of a green old garden. 

The captive Israelite found his ideal of 
security and peace "under his vine and fig 
tree," where none made him afraid. 

These poetic representations are symbols, 
for, will fancies spring, or dreams come, or 
lovers meet, or the deep sense of home be felt, 
in a garden open to the public gaze ? 

The enclosed garden symbolizes civilized 
man's relation to wild nature. At first it is a 
contest for mastery, but it results in an alliance 
by which nature is tamed and rendered more 
beautiful, and in turn ministers to man and 
becomes his inspiration in art and song. 
[ 17 ] 




MY GARDEN It is by conquest that civilized man has risen 
OF DREAMS above both wild nature an(J w y d man The 

cave, tent, cabin, cottage, castle, and palace 
have gradually been evolved, and in evidence 
of Nature's gifts when won, around palace and 
cottage waves and blooms the garden. 

But man has not been wholly faithful to his 
alliance with Nature. In the progress of what 
we call civilization there has come to be, more 
or less, a divorce of man from nature. Some 
one has said that "progress is a disease, and 
eventually society will die of civilization." 

What truth is there in that statement? This 
much, certainly. We are living an artificially 
heated life. The modern man is highly special- 
ized, both mentally and physically, and has 
developed and exists at the expense of a first 
essential and necessity. His life is unnatural 
and out of sequence. 

Living and working under these conditions, 
we lose life's correct perspective. With our 
eyes fixed upon our special task, we become 
abnormally self-conscious. We make ourselves 
larger than we are. We give to our tasks an 
exaggerated importance, and in the feverish 

[18] 



pursuit of our ends are draining the blood of A GARDEN 
F 6 ENCLOSED 

our nerves. 

In times long past walled gardens, like 
castles, were a necessary protection against 
enemies, whether of wild nature or of wild man. 
Is there not something like that state of things 
today? Is there not an industrialism as pitiless 
as the most savage militarism of the past? 

Dante, exiled from Florence, appeared at a 
convent and was asked who he might be. He 
answered, "One who is in quest of peace/' 
Does not the longing for peace make men flee 
the market-place? The same turbulent world 
that drove men into cloisters, that, seeking 
peace, they might at least find quiet, is driving 
us also. The gross materialism of our commer- 
cialism is compelling an outward, or perhaps a 
backward, look for mental health. 

There is a sense of disappointment and 
chagrin confessed by even the successful in 
life's competitions. "Like the man in the play, 
we have looked into Vesuvius and found noth- 
ing in it — except ashes." 

Does health of body and of mind lie in the 
direction of nature? 
[19] 



MY GARDEN There is a feeling that there is a secret which 
OF DREAMS , , f , ^ • • «. , f A • 

we nave lost, and that it is to be relound in 

nature. This feeling points in the right direc- 
tion. The artificiality of our lives has deadened 
us to a true appreciation of nature and of the 
health of body and of mind which nature 
fosters. "We have no ears for the whisper of 
the flower, the cloud's message, the star's song. 
The din of our civilization makes it hard to 
hear the pulsing of the universe. The roofs 
that hem us in shut«off from our eyes the love- 
liness of the skies." We need to recover a sense 
of our kinship with nature, and draw more life 
from her bosom. We need to find again the 
lost secret. 

How are we to find it? There are those who 
say that "to know the secret of nature," and 
so the secret of peace, "you must become an 
obedient part of it." 

If that be true, why not act upon Rousseau's 
philosophy and go back to pure untamed 
nature? 

The fatal mistake in so doing would be that 
of overstatement. To go back to untamed 
nature would mean for man such an overstate- 

[20] 



ment of freedom as would break all the fetters A GARDEN 
of obligation and duty which belong to him as ENCLOSED 
man, and in the acknowledgment of which he 
rises into his true manhood. 

Nature herself warns us against such a 
course. In nature all things are under law and 
fulfil their purpose. There is health of body 
and of mind in getting into a real relationship 
with things, because there is a reasonableness 
and a beauty of the nature of things, but such 
a relationship requires that man shall know 
himself as man, and shall not lose sight of his 
obligations as man. 

The spiritual value of maintaining a right 
relation to nature is symbolized in the culti- 
vated garden. 

Apostles of the gospel of nature maintain 
that "that alone is to be condemned which is 
against nature," and argue for naked confor- 
mity to nature. I repeat, Nature herself warns 
us against such a course, for, if "there is 
nothing in her which is mean or base," there 
is that which is ugly or disagreeable. If not 
ugly in itself, it affects us as ugly. Nature has 
her slime, her muck, her ruins. And Nature 

[21 ] 



MY GARDEN takes note of this and is constantly cover- 
OF DREAMS j n g Qver an( j beautifying her ugly spots. She 
covers her marshes with mosses and her dead 
tree-trunks with vines. The old mother is 
constantly putting beautiful garments over 
the nakedness of her children. 

The mind that dwells upon the under side 
of things may do so in the name of realism and 
truth, but has departed from Nature's method. 
Nature has processes that are unpleasant to 
see, but she conducts them much in secret. 
The decay, the ferment, these she hides, yet 
out of them she produces new life and beauty. 
She has made out of the ruins of a hemlock a 
garden of orchids. 

Nature teaches us to appreciate the spiritual 
value of the enclosed garden, for the enclosed 
garden symbolizes that institution that con- 
serves and fosters the clean things of life. It 
connects one with the great life-supporting 
currents of the universe, and yet so separates 
one's portion of the world as to make of it a 
home. It is this deep sense of home that is the 
most real and most vital part of our joy in 
gardens. The garden stands for the home. It 

[ 22 ] 



represents belief in reserve, and courtesy, and A GARDEN 
r II- ENCLOSED 

reverence for sacred things. 

The way to health for our artificially heated 
life is not back to the wild, but back to the 
sweet old ideals of home and hospitality and 
unselfishness. 

And that is why we must be careful that our 
"garden enclosed " has gates. 

Our love of the garden must not take us out 
of touch with the common human sympathies. 
Nor will it if we be true men and women. 
One's share in the graces and charities of life 
need not be curtailed. There may be a sense 
of seclusion without wholly shutting oneself 
in, or wholly shutting out everybody or every- 
thing else. 

Build walls to shut out the things that are 
raw and unbeautiful, that there may be place 
for the finer things of life, but there must be 
open gates that friend and neighbor, yes, and 
the stranger, may come in, and that you may 
go out and touch things outside with beauty 
and idealism and religion. 

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite 
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. 

[ 23 1 



From north and south, from east and 
west, 

The pride of every zone, 
The fairest, rarest, and the best, 
May all be made our own. 

WHITTIER 



ONE'S OWN 
GARDEN 



ONE'S OWN GARDEN 

"The garden that I love," of which Tennyson 
sings, and the one of which the late poet- 
laureate wrote with such affection, has each 
in it the note of personal love because of per- 
sonal relationship. One is endeared by asso- 
ciation, the other, by possession as well. One 
is loved as the garden of the beloved, the other, 
as the poet's own. 

Mr. Austin voices an ineradicable instinct 
when he says, "If the whole world were a 
garden, I should still want to have a particular 
and exclusive plot as my own." 

Doubtless man's desire to assert himself in 
mastery over nature explains in part the in- 
stinct of possession; but it is, perhaps, more 
his sense of cultivated beauty that demands it. 

Nature herself requires it at his hands, 
for "Nature left to herself is a reactionist, 
always slipping back from worse to worse." 
[ 27 ] 



¥X GARDEN Man s instinct is to express himself. He 

OF DREAMS / V t i * a a u u 

wants to plan his own garden. As has been 

finely said, "man is designed to design, and 

he cannot avoid endeavoring to reproduce, 

externally, the proportion and harmony which 

are the very essence of his own organism, and 

which permit of his existence." 

One of the charms of one's own garden is 
that one can plant what he likes and where he 
likes. The planting may not have the approval 
of the landscape architect, and it may be a 
mistake, but his is the pleasure of working 
out his own ideas and the benefit of learning 
from his mistakes. 

The tendency to make gardening a matter 
of high art is not without some drawbacks. 
A great deal is made of the technical side of 
gardening, — of color schemes, broad effects, 
etc., — with the result that to make a garden 
has come to seem to be a formidable thing, 
and many, incapable of high art, are deterred 
from the attempt. 

If this feeling were to become common, how 
many small gardens, due only to the planting 
impulse and a love of flowers, would be ruled 

[28] 



out, and how many little corners in our world ONE'S 
would be less pleasant places to live in! 

We give thanks to the makers of our dear 
little home gardens, where flowers seem to love 
to bloom, in a very riot of colors, it may be. 
The garden spirit is present there, and where 
the garden spirit is, whether in the perfect 
lines and plantings of the great gardens of the 
great artists, or in the little plat of the merely 
flower loving, there it will incarnate itself in 
loveliness of plant and flower. 

The garden may be as original and as in- 
dividual as a poem or a picture, and will be if 
it expresses the soul of its maker. It will as 
truly have a life of its own, and a mood of its 
own. 

Such a garden may not lend itself to imita- 
tion. Imitation may not be desirable, but it 
serves its purpose well in expressing the spirit 
of its maker, and possesses the most essential 
quality of any work of art in its pure sincerity. 

If one's garden be, as some one has charac- 
terized the garden of the artist, Miss Cecilia 
Beaux, "a garden of the heart," it will have 
a loveliness all its own, although it fail to meet 
[ 29 ] 



MY GARDEN the conventional idea of a garden, or to merit 
OF DREAMS ^ pra j se of ^ ^ 

It must be evident that when Mr. Austin 
says that he would always want the" particular 
and exclusive plot" of his own, he means much 
more than the mere desire of ownership. To 
be really "one's own garden" it must mean 
much more. 

The distinction which Mr. Austin makes 
between "one's own" and the "gardener's 
garden" is very real. The gardener's garden 
is one made for another whose sole relation 
to it is financial. He pays for the ground, the 
plants, and the labor. He does not make the 
garden. He does not come into the personal 
relations with it which the knowledge of it and 
the love of it bring about, and which alone can 
make it one's own in any true spiritual sense. 

The pleasures of a garden are by no means 
only in its product, but far more in its proc- 
esses. A garden is full of little secrets and 
confidences which you lose if you leave it en- 
tirely to another. To hand over to another the 
supreme care of one's garden is to give away 
that finer and truer ownership which can be 

[30] 



his only who, because he loves it, tends it with ONE'S OWN 

his own hands, learns its needs with his own GARDEN 

heart, and grows into familiar companionship 

with the beautiful living things in it. The trees 

and bushes and flowers planted and tended by 

his hands come to be friends, and dearer by 

each association which gathers about them. 

He learns their speech. They tell him the 

secret of their beauty, and they are his, as one's 

friends may be his own. 

Such possession is not bought except with 
love. To really have the flowers, you must have 
them as you have your friends. You must 
"consort with them, tend them in sickness 
and in health, cultivate them for better or for 
worse, and let them twine themselves about 
your inner and outer life," for only so can 
your garden be your own. 

But in no absolute sense may the garden be 
one's own. I am glad that in no such sense 
can it be so. By an unerring law, when one 
attempts to make it his own in the spirit of 
selfish exclusion he loses it in just that deep 
spiritual sense that the man who is unwilling 
to give life loses it. 
[31 I 



MY GARDEN 
OF DREAMS 

The garden has many lessons to teach, but 
none does it more surely teach than this: If 
the cultivation of a garden does not promote 
the tender graces and extend the sweet char- 
ities of life, it is proof sufficient that we have 
not learned the secret of its life, and are still 
outside of that knowledge which alone makes 
it truly one's own. 

It is a large truth that God would teach us 
in the garden. He is constantly reminding us 
that man is not the center and aim of all that 
exists, for in spite of all that man can do He 
holds the garden open, through gateways of 
earth and sky, to bird and insect, for whom, 
as truly as for us, flower and fruit are made. 

"Other eyes than ours 
Are made to look on flowers. 
Eyes of small birds and insects small, 
The deep sun-blushing rose 
Around which the prickles close 
Opens her bosom to them all. 
The tiniest living thing 
That soars on feathered wing 

[32] 



"Other eyes than ours 
Are made to look on flowers. 



Or crawls among the long grass out of sight, 
Has just as good a right 
To its appointed portion of delight 
As any king." 

Is there no suggestion here of obligation in 
relation to the social problems of our time? 
Is there not to be a time when men shall 
acknowledge one common brotherhood and all 
shall be sharers of the comforts and the beauty 
of life? Shall it not be that each one's own 
garden will be but part of one great garden 
where every home will have the joys and graces 
which we associate with the name of home ? 

It is one of my dreams, in this garden of 
mine. 




ONE'S OWN 
GARDEN 



[33] 



Flowers from all heavens, and love- 
lier than their names, 
Grew side by side. 

TENNYSON 



THE GARDEN 
GLORIOUS 




THE GARDEN 
GLORIOUS 



THE GARDEN GLORIOUS 

The title is taken from a poem of the early 
part of the sixteenth century, which describes 
an English garden of that period. Let us go 
with the poet into his "garden glorious." 

"Then we went to the garden glorious, 
Like to a place of pleasure most solacious, 
With Flora painted and wrought curiously 
In divers knottes of marvaylous greteness, 
Rampande lyons stood up wonderfly 
Made of all herbs of dulcet sweetness, 
With many dragons of marvaylous likeness 
Of divers floures made ful craftely, 
By Flora couloured with colours sundry." 

We recognize the elaborately constructed 
garden of the Tudor period. 

It is enclosed with walls, and probably a 
moat, a reminder of a still earlier time. It is 
divided by two principal cross-paths into 
quarters, subdivided into knots, while outside 
[37] 



MY GARDEN runs a border laid out into elaborate geometric 
OF DREAMS „ jj u a a u a u 

patterns. Here are shaded walks and arbors, 

dovecots and fountains. The maze or laby- 
rinth is a favorite feature. Carved animals of 
wood or stone, or of clipped evergreen shrubs 
of "marvaylous likeness'' are distributed over 
this garden, and fanciful sun-dials, without 
which no garden is considered complete. 

Flowers as well as herbs and vegetables 
grow here. The Acanthus, Asphodel, Auricula, 
Amaranth, Cornflower, Daisy, Cowslip, Daf- 
fodil, Gillyflower, Hollyhock, Iris, Lily-of- 
the-Valley, White and Red Lilies, Nigella, 
Pansy, Pink, Peony, Periwinkle, Poppy, Prim- 
rose, Rocket, Rosemary, Jasmine, Roses, — 
especially the Sweet Brier, — Snapdragon, 
Sweet William, Violet, Wallflower, — all these 
I find in a list of this "garden glorious. " 

We think of Cardinal Wolsey's famous 
garden at Hampton Court, described by Cav- 
endish. There, we are told, the Cardinal was 
accustomed to walk at the close of the day as 
he recited evensong. 

Henry VIII, to make room for improve- 
ments designed by himself, almost swept away 

[38] 



the Cardinal's garden, and he too seemed to THE GARDEN 

find it a favorite place, for, as the author of 

"English Pleasure Gardens" tells it, "in this 

garden young Henry VIII carried on his first 

flirtations with Anne Boleyn, and here, when 

overtaken by infirmities, he used to hobble 

about in his premature old age." 

The poet has given us a glimpse of the "gar- 
den glorious" of that earlier time. It tells 
us the garden ideal of the period. 

That which embodies the garden ideal of a 
people is always the "garden glorious" of that 
people, and the garden ideal of any time ex- 
presses the traits of the domestic and social 
life of the time. At the same time, the form 
that the ideal assumes is often affected by 
motives drawn from the gardens of other times 
and other peoples, foreign and unsuited to the 
conditions under which the imitation is at- 
tempted. 

For example, the Italian gardens may be 
imitated in America, but the real Italian villa 
garden is possible only in Italy. It is the crea- 
tion of the Italian temperament, and requires 
the glowing sunshine and the spacious atmos- 
[ 39 1 



MY GARDEN phere of Italy. There it is the "garden glo- 

OF DREAMS • „ J & & 

nous. 

The development of the English garden into 
the Elizabethan and the later sentimental 
garden of the eighteenth century shows in a 
most interesting way how garden art may be 
affected by foreign motives. 

The sentimental garden grew out of a reac- 
tion against the artificiality of the earlier gar- 
dens, and sought to express better the human 
sentiment which always seeks expression in 
art. But sentiment may become artificial 
because strained and exaggerated. Then it 
degenerates into an affected mannerism, as it 
did in the sentimental gardens of the later 
period. 

The style of the sentimental garden was 
copied largely from the Chinese emotional 
garden, where it had been developed to a 
degree that amazes the modern western mind. 
There the garden was constructed to produce 
not only emotions of pleasure, but of surprise, 
of melancholy, and of terror. In the great 
gardens of China are to be seen not only the 
most pleasing landscape effects, but scenes of 

[40] 



terror in gloomy woods or dark caverns where THE GARDEN 
everything is blighted or devastated. 

Such scenes were imitated with more or less 
success in France and England. To reproduce 
the marks of decay often seen in nature, 
dead trees and stumps were planted. To 
arouse the emotion caused by the contempla- 
tion of decay in human life, various sorts of 
ruins were imitated and funeral monuments 
erected. So morbid a fondness for these em- 
blems of decay was there that "the garden 
without a grave could never hope to arouse a 
powerful sensation of agreeable melancholy." 

All sorts of sham temples, artificial ruins, 
rusticity in all conceivable forms, were relied 
upon as the main attractions. The cultivation, 
not of flowers, but of morbid feeling, seems to 
have been the purpose of the sentimental 
garden. 

And all this was done in the name of nature 
and in protest against the formal in art. The 
history of art furnishes no more striking ex- 
ample of exaggerated sentiment degenerated 
into artificiality. " Simplicity was a pose, while 
nature was a mass of deceitful illusions." 
[41] 



MY GARDEN And yet each of these gardens of the past 
OF DREAMS was the "garden glorious" of its time. Each 
was an attempt to express an ideal, and in its 
way reflected the life of its time. Each has 
contributed something of permanence to gar- 
den art, for the lasting in the art of any people 
is that which is true to the temperament of 
that people. 

Garden art is no exception. Gardens of any 
period express something of the life of the time, 
and in so far as the world-wide laws of all true 
art are adhered to, they are beautiful and 
furnish motives for future development of 
garden art. 

True art will always give form to the ideals 
of a people. But the ideals change — they grow 
or decay. 

The American garden, for us the "garden 
glorious" — what is it to be? 

There are some very beautiful and notable 
gardens in America, but garden art is still 
young with us; as some one has expressed it, 
"in the awkward age." 

It seems to be evident that no one school of 
landscape architects will dictate the American 

[ 42 ] 



garden. No one style will exclude all others. THE GARDEN 

\\tu a • a + u GLORIOUS 

Where now American gardens are to be seen 

at their best they have a marked individuality. 

We have good examples of the formal garden, 

enchanting naturalistic and "wild" effects, 

but that which is most satisfying and most 

promising is the fact that the American garden, 

where the real garden is seen, expresses the 

soul of the household for which it springs and 

blooms. 

Although reflecting an intense American 
individualism, there are indications of a sane 
garden art and of a sincere appreciation of 
nature in its spiritual quality. The ideal which 
seems to be luring us is such a combination or 
fusion of the formal and the naturalistic as 
will give us Nature's best gifts so ordered by 
art as to express in simplicity and purity, with- 
out sham or exaggeration, the sentiment that 
finds a natural home in the garden. 

It is probable that the American garden will 
reflect the bigness of thought and ideal which 
geographic spaciousness begets. The artistic 
motive will work within larger limits than 
those of countries where the formal in art has 
[43] 



MY GARDEN had most effective expression. This would in- 

OF DREAMS + • * u • .1 

dicate some prominence to be given to large 

naturalistic effects. 

Doubtless, too, the American garden ideal 
will be expressive of our national social scheme. 
In theory, our social scheme is democratic. It 
proposes to make possible for every home the 
joys and graces that we associate with the 
name of home. 

There is, indeed, a larger ideal, not only in 
America, but everywhere, taking on form. A 
new social ideal is forming and expressing itself 
in many ways. We are at the beginning of a 
change in the industrial and social relations of 
society — a great change in the relation of man 
to man. 

This change is already finding expression in 
the art of the garden. Coincident with the 
social movement is the evolution of a new 
garden ideal. 

The wonderful gardens of the past were 
made for the few, and ministered too often to 
a life of sensuous and selfish pleasure. They 
were retreats sacred to idleness and exclusive- 
ness. They belonged to the times when the 

[44] 



J 



relations of man to man were those of master THE GARDEN 
and slave, lord and serf, or, as later, capitalist GLORIOUS 
and laborer. Now the signs of the times indi- 
cate that those relations are changing and are 
to become the relations of brother to brother. 

This evolution of a new social ideal is shift- 
ing emphasis from property to people, and 
from the individual to the community. The 
new garden ideal aims to make all sharers of 
the comforts and the beauty of life. It pro- 
poses to make homes — beautiful homes — for 
all, and homes so related as to express the 
common brotherhood. The ideal is that of a 
garden community. 

Not long ago this was but a dream. Only 
about fifteen years ago was published Mr. 
Howard's remarkable book, entitled "To- 
morrow," telling his beautiful dream of the 
"Garden City." He dreamed of a city where 
comfort, beauty, and happiness are assured, 
with no opportunity for the unrestrained 
license of speculators, builders, or owners. His 
dream city was a city of clean streets, wide 
spaces, wholesome and comfortable homes, 
with everywhere grass and trees and flowers, 
[ 45 1 



MY £ at a cost so l° w as to make them possible for 

OF DREAMS , , F 

everybody. 

A beautiful dream! Many said it must for- 
ever be only a dream. 

But the dream is taking visible form. It is 
rising before our eyes. The garden commun- 
ities of Letchworth, Hampstead, Port Sunlight, 
and Bourneville in England are practical 
demonstrations. The garden city is no longer 
a dream. It is not "the newest Utopia." Its 
houses are built of substantial brick and mor- 
tar, its trees and grass and flowers are growing 
and blooming — this much is history. And the 
idea on which it is built is one of eternal truth. 

The history of this movement is one of the 
most striking facts of modern life. A garden 
city, where each home has its own garden, but 
where each is so related to all that the whole 
is one great garden — that is, indeed, "the 
garden glorious." 

I have called it a dream taking form. In 
fact it is only part of a larger dream that many 
are dreaming today. It is the dream of all who 
love their fellow-men, a dream of better things 
for all men — for men and women who toil and 



suffer. These dreamers dream of a day when THE GARDEN 
poverty and degradation will be no more, when 
the common conscience shall be awakened, and 
true wisdom found through avenues of peace. 

Men have been dreaming this dream ever 
since Jesus taught of the Kingdom of God on 
earth, and the angels' song set His gospel in 
music. It is this dream that is seeking form 
in the garden city, to be more truly than 
gardens of the past have ever been, "the 
Garden Glorious. " 




[47] 



The poetry of earth is never dead. 

KEATS 



THE POETICAL 
GARDEN 




THE POETICAL 
GARDEN 



THE POETICAL GARDEN 

We read of "poems in stone." Why not 
poems in plant and flower? We hear "songs 
without words." If wordless sounds may be 
made to express sentiment, why not form and 
color? Nature transferred to canvas is made 
to appeal with the power of an ideal. Why not 
nature in its own living beauty and power? 
As there may be, to use Mendelssohn's fancy, 
"music without harping," so there may be 
poems without words. 

It is neither sentimental nor inaccurate to 
speak of the "poetical garden," for all the 
elements of poetry, or such as correspond to 
the elements of poetry, are to be found in a 
garden, and it needs only the soul of the poet, 
with technical skill to express himself, to make 
the garden poetical. 

Not every garden is a poem, any more than 
all verse is poetry, but given the poet in the 
[ 5i 1 



MY GARDEN garden, and the garden will express thought 

OF DREAMS j r i* 1 r nr 

and feeling as truly as a poem or a 1 ennyson 
or a Shelley. 

There are gardens that are outbursts of 
rhythmic expression of purest idealism as truly 
as the noblest poem ever written. There are 
garden effects that are pure lyrics, garden 
scenes charmingly idyllic. There are gardens 
as free and spontaneous as the outbursts of a 
Blake or the delicious melodies of a Proctor, 
gardens that have all the melody and grace of 
one of Swinburne's creations. There are gar- 
dens as rich in expression as the poetry of 
Keats, others as chaste and pure under classic 
restraint as the poems of Matthew Arnold, or 
varied in poetic elements, yet with complete 
and even balance, as the sustained composi- 
tions of Tennyson. Nature is limitless in her 
works and moods. It needs only that the 
garden poet understand her moods and 
have skill in using her gifts to give her 
voice. 

The fact that the garden is not poetical to 
all does not count against the claim here made 
for it any more than the fact that all do not 

[52] 



have a sympathetic ear counts against good THE 
poetry. The poet, to convey his ideal or his GAR 
feeling to another, requires not only that he 
have the ideal or the feeling, and the skill to 
express it poetically, but that he speak to such 
as also have the sympathetic imagination. 
There must be hearers fit. 

You can read a poem and find only words. 
You can hear a symphony and recognize only 
sounds. You can go into a garden and see 
nothing but trees and plants and flowers. 

I repeat, all the elements of poetry are in a 
garden — rhythm, melody, stately meter. There 
is even that which corresponds to rhyme, for 
plantings may be, where necessary to expres- 
sion, balanced and uniform. If you will look 
into the life of the garden, you will find the 
drama, intense and complex. There are idyllic 
gardens, lyrical gardens, tragic gardens, yes, 
and I have seen comic ones. 

It is interesting to note how like the history 
of poetry that of the garden has been. There 
have been periods of rigid conformity to rule, 
with symmetry and balance as the main con- 
siderations, and with garden effects as stately 
[ 53 ] 



MY GARDEN an d measured as the couplets of a Pope. The 
OF DREAMS naturalistic or "wild" garden has been as un- 
fettered and spontaneous as the most roman- 
tic poetry. There have been periods when, as 
in the sentimental gardens of the eighteenth 
century, the sentiment was morbid and un- 
wholesome. There are formal gardens, as 
chaste and restrained as the purest classics, 
and there are gardens where the highest art, 
with reverence for the soul of Nature, has 
striven, as in poetry truly great, to give to 
Nature that setting where her appeal may best 
be made. There are gardens with a quality of 
expression as unique as the poetry of Browning, 
and others as commonplace as the sentiments 
of the conventional poets. 

The poetical garden is of no one fixed style. 
It may be formal as the famous Italian gardens, 
classic as the most restrained, or wild as the 
lover of the naturalistic can make it if he be 
an artist in the making. 

If, then, we may speak of the poetical gar- 
den, — if we would have the poetical garden, — 
we must recognize certain laws to which the 
garden, like poetry, must conform. All styles 

[54] 



of gardens, however much they vary, must THE 
conform to certain first principles. GAR. 

Trace the analogy a little farther. Poetry is 
a means of expression, but so also is prose. The 
poet is an interpreter. He gives voice to the 
common thought and feeling, but so also may 
the writer of prose. The difference is in the 
form of expression. Poetry is beautiful thought 
or feeling which lies deeper than ordinary 
speech expressed in rhythmic form, not merely 
uttered, as in prose. 

The garden is an ordered expression of the 
beauty and harmony of nature. It may be 
made, like a poem, a revelation of nature's 
harmonies, and as such, gardening, like poetry, 
must be ranked as an art, and must conform 
to the world-wide laws of art. 

Not all poetry conforms to one model. There 
is not one style of garden accepted to the exclu- 
sion of all others. Like Browning among the 
poets, a garden may be unique, may even, like 
him, revel in seeming confusion and strive 
against the trammels of order. There may be 
a barbaric sense of color and lack of form, but, 
as for such poetry to be acknowledged it must 
[55] 



MY GARDEN be that of a Browning, so for such a garden to 
OF DREAMS ^ ac k now l e dg e( l i t mus t indeed be the work 
of a master. Even then a Browning is less a 
master of expression, though he be Browning. 

The pure office of the poet is to express with 
grace and charm what lies too deep for ordi- 
nary speech. The pure office of the poet of the 
garden is to express with grace and charm in 
ordered nature the beauty and harmony of 
nature, which is unordered and therefore not 
fully expressed in the wild. 

A first requirement of the garden is that it 
be beautiful. Like the poet, the maker of the 
garden must be, to use Hawthorne's phrase, 
an artist of the beautiful. He must be able to 
discern the spirit of beauty in nature, revealed 
only to the poet's finer sight, and give it form 
in the life of the garden. He must enable the 
imagination to discern something of the ideal 
beauty. 

Like the poet, the maker of the garden, if he 
would express effectively his ideal, must have 
precision of touch. He must know exactly 
what effect he desires, and produce it by a firm 
stroke of color here, a beam of light or a 

[ 56 ] 



shadow there. In short, he must give his crea- THE POETICAL 
tion tone. Clear expression is as necessary in GARDEN 
the garden as in the poem. 

There are, alas! gardens as barren of poetry 
as is mere rhyme, and as depressing, simply 
because, like mere rhymsters, their makers lack 
both poetic feeling and the art of expression. 
To the true artist nature is, to use the words 
of a Japanese garden critic, "like some beau- 
tiful musical instrument, finer than any ever 
made by human hands, but still an instrument, 
with harmonies to be coaxed out." To coax 
out the harmonies requires the master musi- 
cian. 

A poetical garden is not, we must be sure, a 
mere show-garden, but a garden poetical in 
spirit and effect. It is much a matter of " atmos- 
phere." He who would make such a garden 
must have his vision of things spiritual and 
lovely. With that and skill to give it form he 
will make it a place where one can sit and 
dream, for 

"The poetry of earth is never dead." 



[57] 



Flowers worthy of Paradise. 

MILTON 



THE FESTIVAL 
OF THE SIGHT 




THE FESTIVAL 
OF THE SIGHT 



THE FESTIVAL OF THE SIGHT 

The most brilliant of pageants is passing. 
Rank upon rank of beautifully costumed fig- 
ures, bearing aloft banners gorgeous in color, 
and marching to the notes of a mystical music, 
are passing. It is one long festival. 

First in this pageant are many little people, 
beautiful of face and graceful of form. They 
are decked with the gayest colors: here and 
there a blue or a white, a pink or a red, or even 
a rich purple, but mainly yellow, with the 
groundwork of their costumes green. They 
carry banners, "yellow glorious and golden/' 
and are led by trumpeters blowing their "gay 
fanfare." 

These are the young and the gay in this 
pageant of life and beauty. Crowned with 
daffodils and singing lyric snatches, they pass 
"down the greening hills. " 



[61] 



^OF DREAMS What jocund shouts of young life, making 
what of old was called a "glad noise"! 

Now come some ancient gilds. What stately 
march is theirs, what banners of scarlet and 
white, yellow and blue, pink and rose ! It is the 
very climax of color. Gold and crimson and 
scarlet, melting now into soft greens and again 
bright with flashing cobalt blue. What bla- 
zonry flashing in the sunlight! Here, too, are 
musicians, but the music is richer and deeper 
toned, for these are master musicians and play 
on all instruments. 

It is the ancient gilds of artists and musi- 
cians who are passing now. 

Who are they flaunting themselves in red 
shirts and mob caps? They are true prole- 
tariats. They are workers from garden and 
field, and draw great wagons laden with the 
harvests of their toil. It is a frolicsome, trum- 
peting crowd, singing songs of the field, and 
of home, and of love. 

Close upon their heels is a group that does 
not seem to fit into its place. They are dressed 
as if they belonged to the section gone by some 
time ago and had lagged behind and now fallen 

[ 62 1 



into line again. The color of their costumes is THE FESTIVAL 

• • OF THE SIGHT 

a most exquisite amber, with here and there 

bright ribbons of pink, or white, or even red. 

They are dancing in the sunshine hand in 

hand, nymphs and unconventional fellows, 

playing on zithers and chanting a strange 

Indian incantation. 

How changed the scene now! What strange 
figures, robed in gray or brown, and now in 
white! In costumes of airy filigree they pass, 
or covered with great white sheets, bearing 
long icicle spears. Now they come in robes 
positively covered with diamonds. 

These are not artists with painted banners, 
but sculptors bearing symbols cut from cold 
white marble. The music to which they march 
is now lowland weird, again it rises into a riot of 
wind instruments, and falls away into the plain- 
tive notes of the oboe and the English horn. 

It has taken about five minutes of time to 
tell of this pageant, but to see it you must look 
long, for it marches through the whole year. 

It is a very ancient ceremonial, as old as the 
flowers. The Greeks called it "the festival of 
the sight," and it is the flowers they meant. 
[63] ' 



MY GARDEN It is a brilliant pageant, this festival of the 
OF DREAMS s jgj lti j t j s t h e pageant of the seasons, rich 
in all their colors and loaded with their price- 
less gems. 

The Greeks loved color. They painted even 
their statues. Doubtless it was their love of 
color that led them to make a festival of the 
passing of the flowers. To them the flowers 
were a color-feast for the eye. But neither they 
nor we could imagine a festival without music. 
There must be music in the march of a pageant 
such as that of the flowers. The soul that has 
not felt the perfect rhythm of nature and 
listened to its deep-toned harmonies has but 
poorly interpreted its symbols. The year is 
"God's great cycle of song." 

There is a close relation between colors and 
sounds. The delicate ear and the clear sight 
are both engaged by nature's teaching. The 
need of the ear and the need of the eye are the 
same. Each seeks, whether in nature or in art, 
the one fundamental harmony. Colors have 
harmonies as ravishing as music, and just as 
sounds produce discords when made at ran- 
dom, so there are combinations of colors as 

[64] 



false and discordant as the notes of one who THE FESTIVAL 
should take up a violin and scrape away at OF THE SIGHT 
random. 

All the varying aspects of nature are 
strangely akin to music. They alike stir unsus- 
pected depths, and we can understand why it is 
that the great musicians have drawn so much 
of their inspiration from nature, and why we so 
naturally speak of "color" in music. 

There is "a gamut of pigments." There are 
all the notes from high E to A minor. There 
are all the movements from the simple melody 
to the great oratorio. There is every mood of 
the soul that ever musician dreamed about, 
from triumphant hallelujahs to the sad notes 
that lose themselves in mystery and silence. 

It is true, no one can tell it. It must be felt. 
When I have heard a good orchestral perform- 
ance I know how impossible it is to tell another 
its perfection, for I cannot reproduce the 
music. I can only hear it. It is just so with the 
color harmonies in a garden. I cannot put a 
warm glow into words. I cannot make a 
diagram of it. I can only see it. 

That perfect symphony yonder, where Ma- 
[65] 



MY GARDEN donna lilies bloom against the sky-blue lark- 
OF DREAMS spurs? w ; th whke an( j blue harebells at their 

feet and pale yellow foxgloves near by — you 
must see it as you must hear a Mozart. 

I cannot tear the quivering chords from a 
symphony and lay them out to dry in a criti- 
cism. I cannot divest myself of the feeling 
that music is made to be heard, not explained 
or analyzed. I am glad that I have ears to hear. 

I feel very much the same about color har- 
mony. It has its allegros and its andantes, but 
I can best appreciate the rhythms without 
conscious effort to understand the ideas. These 
visual rhythms go very deep into a man's soul 
and are not easily unraveled. It is better 
simply to listen while the melody lasts, for it 
will die away in silence. 

For such is the fleeting character of all ex- 
quisite things. Nothing that is beautiful stays. 
As each sweet flower passes it is gone from us. 
Like the flower, the emotion belongs to the 
hour. 

And it is well. It is well that we cannot stay 
the festival. If we did, we would only petrify 
its life. 

[66] 



Well if it lead us to be, not afraid of the THE FESTIVAL 
divine processes, but thrilled with "the glory OF THE SIGHT 
of going on." If it do this, then will our dream 
of life be truer and richer, and something that 
has entered into life will live and kindle the 
old light even when our eyes have grown dim. 

In a pageant, the last place is the place of 
honor. The crowning glory is left for the van- 
ishing moment. 




[67] 



For now the Heavenly Power 
Makes all things new, 

And thaws the cold, and fills 
The flower with dew. 

TENNYSON 



THE 
YOUTHERIE 
OF THE YEAR 



THE YOUTHERIE OF THE YEAR 



"The youtherie of the year!" So did Rich- 
ard Steele name the springtime of the year, and 
I make haste to adopt the words since what 
I saw and heard in my garden this bright day. 

A brightness and a touch of warmth of the 
sunshine drew me into my garden. I heard the 
first call of the robin. I saw tiny buds of prom- 
ise, the opening ones of the willow, the pur- 
plish shoots of the phlox, the pink cones of the 
peony. I saw the snowdrops lift their sweet 
bells, and shoots of the daffodils pushing up 
out of the earth. These told me that winter is 
past and the time of singing birds has come. 

For a moment I caught the odor of swelling 
rose vines and lilac bushes. There can be no 
doubt. " Lilactive," the sweet folk name for 
spring, is here. 

We shall smell the spring lilacs again. 
"This old world seems young once more." 

[ 71 ] 



MY GARDEN "The youtherie of the year!" Its note is the 
OF DREAMS , • T J. w u+ 

note 01 joy. Joy scatters brightness in a 

thousand hues. Nothing seems inanimate. The 
trees are wide awakened from their sleep. 
Whole families of flowers are putting on gay 
attire to make one great holiday. The "festi- 
val of the sight" has begun. The first ranks 
are passing. 

The very clouds and their shadows look 
alive. Everywhere is movement, everywhere 
life, everywhere joy. All nature sings hymns 
in welcome to the perfect year. The Spirit of 
Beauty bids it. 

He who does not discern the infinite possibil- 
ities of beauty and poetry in the world now 
must have something radically wrong with 
himself. Who would not poetize when he 
breathes such air as this? 

Such shadows as there are are like the shad- 
ows on the light of childhood. If for a little Na- 
ture is silent, it is but to burst forth into louder 
song. If the clouds grow heavy and shadows 
fall, it is but quickly to open their heart again 
to the sunshine. The showers sport with the 
sunshine until the very sky is rainbowed. A 

[ 72 ] 



day like this helps me to understand the THE 

"Spring Song" of Mendelssohn or of Grieg. OF^TlS^YEAR 

Spring is sometimes called fickle. It is only 
sportive and vibrant with life. Its promise of 
summer never fails us. 

Spring may play hide-and-seek with winter 
today, clutch you with fingers of frost to- 
morrow, or even cast a dash of sleet in your 
face, or throw over you a sheet of snow, but 
you must not forget that spring is "the youth- 
erie of the year," and, like all youth, full of life 
and fun and all sorts of insolence. 

And, like all youth, spring is privileged. He 
will play his pranks, and we, the older and 
wiser, will smile and forgive, for we know that 
next day he will be full of smiles and promises 
again. We do not have it in our hearts to be 
vexed long with this beautiful and fun-loving 
youth. How easily we forgive and forget the 
pranks of youth! 

I see I have been speaking of spring in the 
masculine gender. Am I not mistaken ? Do not 
the poets and the artists paint spring as a 
maiden with a flower between finger and 
thumb — crocus, violet, or primrose ? Yet will 
[73] 



MY GARDEN I hold to the masculine gender for spring, for 
5 is he not the leader of all the forces that will 
march with banners so gay through the long 
year ? 

"The youtherie of the year!" How confi- 
dent in conscious power! How sure in his 
vision of summer glory! Blue-spread over 
heaven, green-spread over earth — no cloud 
above nor shade below, such is spring's perfect 
day. It is the very spirit of youth and health, 
of energy and high hope. 

Vision belongs to youth by right. Though 
he travel daily farther from the east, yet is he 

"By the vision splendid 
On his way attended." 

Such is Wordsworth's radiant view of youth, 
but to me there is something unspeakably sad 
in his sense of the loss of vision in the life of 
the man. Is it true that we must look back 
to youth for brightness and hope? 

Happy we who have come through broken 
weather, if sometimes we gaze into the heart 
of the sky and for a moment feel that the 
ancient glory of the heavens has returned on 

[ 74 ] 



our dream of life, for if visions belong: to the THE 

YOTTTHFR TF 

young, it is ours to dream dreams. 

Pitiful is the life that has lost all the joy of 
youth, to whom "the fine gold has become 
dim," to whom dewdrops are no longer pearls, 
as once they were, nor flowers revelations of 
love unutterable! Sad must be the soul for 
whom knowledge, custom, experience, fate, 
error, and sin have dulled, darkened, and dead- 
ened all things! Hopeless is he who is unable 
to bring over the present something of the bliss 
and beauty of the past, and has no confident 
look toward the future! Lonely the old who 
dream no dreams of hope and peace! For it is 
not meant that youth shall have all the best 
of life, any more than spring has all the best of 
the year. 

Shall we despair because the flowers of 
spring are gone, or because some day of storm 
and rain has strewn the turf with their fair 
petals ? 

"So, some tempestuous storm in early June, 

When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er, 

Before the roses and the longest day — 

When garden walks and all the grassy floor 
[ 75 1 



MY GARDEN With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May 
OF DREAMS ^nd Chestnut flowers are strewn — 

So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, 

From the wet field, through the vext garden trees 

Come, with the volleying rain and tossing breeze — 

The bloom is gone and with the bloom go I. 

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? 

Soon will the high Midsummer's pomps come on, 

Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, 

Soon shall we have gold-dusted Snapdragon, 

Sweet William with his homely cottage smell, 

And Stocks in fragrant blow, 

Roses that down the alleys shine afar, 

And open, jasmine muffled lattices, 

And groups under the dreaming garden trees, 

And the full moon and the white evening star." 

In these lines Matthew Arnold not only 
gives us a glimpse of an English garden, but 
strikes the note of a sane and wholesome faith. 

Spring is the budding season. There are 
flowers of summer and harvests of autumn, 
yes, and a beauty of winter, of which spring 
is only the promise. 

There are lots of things in my garden that 
are not in it really yet, but only planted. They 
will grow and blossom later. Much is embryonic 
yet — it is underground, but it is shooting up. 

[76] 



There is something richer and fuller and THE 

YOUTHERIE 

better in the labor of summer and the harvests q F ^HE YEAR 
of autumn, something nearer the Eternal in 
the stillness and peace of winter, than even 
the freshness and vigor and beauty of spring. 

Better than the visions of the young may be 
the dreams of the old. 

But I am glad to have the bright springtime 
again, and the sense it brings of eternal youth- 
erie that we may carry into all of life. I caught 
today a note of the gladness of life which may 
be ours always. For a little while I went far 
back, even into the Land of Childhood, and 
I am glad that I have not traveled so far from 
that land as to have forgotten its gifts. 




[77] 



What is sweeter than a rose? 

HERBERT 



THE WHITE 
ROSE BUSH 




THE WHITE 
ROSE BUSH 



THE WHITE ROSE BUSH 

Lilac time is past once more. For the moment 
I can understand the regret of one who ex- 
claimed, "If only lilacs lasted forever!" But 
much as I love the lilacs, I cannot long share 
that regret, for June is here, and with June, 
the roses. 

It is a morning full of a thousand scents of 
herb and flower and ripening fruit. It is a 
morning glad with the song of birds. 

The dew still lies heavy on plant and flower, 
gemming grass and hedge, every leaf and twig, 
with diamonds. The morning sun lights up a 
world of beauty. What a day for garden 
dreams! 

This bright June morning is an open gate- 
way to Wonderland. For, if you would know 
something of the wonders of the garden, you 
need only come into touch with its life. To 
find the marvelous, you need only look. It is 
[ 81 ] 



MY GARDEN in the plant at your feet, it is in the grass you 
OF DREAMS ... . . . 

tread upon, it is in the insect that hides in the 

flower, the caterpillar that crawls upon the 

leaf, the bee that sucks honey from the rose, 

the butterfly that flits from bush to bush. 

Let us stop for a while by this white rose 
bush at the end of the walk. 

How did this white rose bush come to be 
here? It was planted by one who is with us 
now only as a memory. But how did she come 
to have a rose so white and full? 

There was a time when there were no such 
roses in all the world. There were only wild 
roses. Yonder is one now. We call it Sweet 
Brier, or Eglantine. It decks itself with little 
simple roses. I think it one of the sweetest 
flowers in my garden, but it has been made 
to serve another purpose than to bear its own 
flowers. The roots of this beautiful white rose 
are really those of a Sweet Brier. One day the 
Sweet Brier was cut down to the ground, the 
skin of its stump was opened, and in this open- 
ing, between the bark and the wood, a little 
bud of a different rose-bush was placed. From 
that day all the life of the Sweet Brier was 

[82] 



given for the nourishment of this bud. It THE WHITE 
became a willing slave, proud of its slavery, ROSE BUSH 
proud of the beautiful white roses not its own. 

But how did the gardener come to have that 
bud now grown into this bush of white roses? 
If there was a time when there were no such 
roses, how did the bud come to be ? 

This opens one of the most interesting chap- 
ters of the garden book; "perhaps," as one 
botanist says, "the most fascinating chapter 
of all in the life-history of plants." It is a 
chapter much too long to write or to read as 
we stand before this rose bush, but we may 
look a little further into the history of this 
white rose. 

But first step over to the Sweet Brier and 
look at it. You see its flower is composed of 
five leaves or petals, in the midst of which are 
many delicate threads supporting little yellow 
masses. These are called stamens, and are the 
male members of the colony. The yellow 
masses are the pollen, with which the pistil 
or female which rises above the stamens is 
touched by the bee which has just flown away. 
The bee in search of honey has carried the 
[83] 



MY GARDEN pollen from the stamens to the pistil. At the 
OF DREAMS I , , . . - • u- u c, 

base or the pistil is a sort 01 egg, in which, alter 

a while, you will find the seeds. 

Now look again at our white rose. Here are 
more petals and only five stamens. By a 
process of cross-breeding, beginning with the 
marriage of the Sweet Brier with a rose 
brought by the Crusaders from Damascus, 
all the stamens except five in this white rose 
have been turned into petals. 

On the next bush is a red rose entirely 
double. Not one stamen is left. The magician 
has turned all those eager lovers into one glo- 
rious double red rose. 

These loves of the flowers, how real they 
are! How sure the lover is to find his bride! 

Just across the path is a bed of white pinks, 
but you see there is one among them spotted 
with red. How did it happen? Left to the 
ordinary course of nature, there would have 
been only white pinks, but in yonder bed of 
red ones there was one who coaxed with his 
honey the bee to carry his pollen over to a 
white one, and here we have their offspring 
decked with the color of each parent. 

[84] 



Well may we stand before this white rose THE WHITE 
bush and hear its parable. It and we and ROSE BUSH 
all things have come from the One Eternal 
Source, and the highest and best in man has 
sprung fundamentally from the instinct which 
we find in the wild rose. Under the same law 
by which the rose loses in stamens and gains 
petals does the human race rise into richer and 
fuller expression. As the many-stamened wild 
rose sacrifices the abundance of its stamens 
that it may become this many-petaled white 
rose, so are the higher reaches of human life 
evolved out of the lower, and under the same 
law. 

Until now we have been looking only at the 
flower of the rose, and no wonder, for its 
beauty may well hold us in admiration. But 
we have had but one little look into wonder- 
land. If we look at the branches and leaves of 
this white rose bush, not to speak of the mys- 
terious things to be found down among the 
roots, we may peer into a magic spectacle. 

With a microscope we might look into some 
of nature's deepest mysteries, for here the 
eternal animate forces are at work, on a minia- 
[85] 



JVtt GARDEN ture scale, indeed, and yet it is the planet s 

OF DREAMS u •«■• «.«. » 

history in petto. 

Little curtains are lifted, revealing "the 
great loom of the universe at work." 

Even with unaided eyes we can see enough 
to hold us many hours. 

There is a bee singing his love song as he 
seeks the heart of the rose, while here, envel- 
oped in the petals of this full-blown rose, is a 
fellow of another sort. This one is at dinner 
or comfortably asleep. We call him a rose 
beetle. We think him a robber and a destroyer 
of beauty, but he will not acknowledge him- 
self a thief, for he claims a prior right to the 
rose. 

Crowded thickly upon the tips of these 
branches are little green creatures. Against 
these, too, the gardener wages a constant war, 
for they live on the very life of the plant and 
breed so rapidly that, but for enemies, they 
would soon cover all the trees and all the plants 
in the world. There is one of its enemies now. 
That worm of cinnamon color and yellow 
stripes will destroy, by feeding on them, many 
thousands of the aphides, and then will prob- 

[86] 



ably be destroyed by its own enemies, ene- 
mies that are carried about on its own body. 
If, however, the worm escapes that fate, it will 
shut itself up in a silken shell, from which it 
will issue one of the most beautiful little crea- 
tures you ever saw, a sort of large fly of a gay 
green color, with wings like a network of rich- 
est lace, and eyes surpassing in brilliancy that 
of precious stones. 

What movement is that down there in the 
grass? Great numbers of little creatures are 
moving in one direction. There is evidently 
some well-understood end in view. Many of 
them are carrying burdens. They are ants just 
returning from battle and carrying home the 
spoils. They are the fierce red ant species who 
have just destroyed a colony of black ants, 
and, much like human wars of a dark past, 
these victors are bearing away to their own 
retreats the eggs and larvae of the black ants, 
where they are born and made the slaves of 
the red ants. 

Let us look for the ant-hill, for it is prob- 
ably close by. Yes, there it is. It is a little 
subterranean city, constructed with much art. 
[ 87 ] 



MY GARDEN These ants are a well-ordered community, 

OF DREAMS i • «. «.u vu , f r . , r J 

working together with a wonderful intelligence. 

Study sociology over an ant-hill. 

All this is but a small part of what we might 
see on or about a single rose-bush. And what 
we do here see of the life of the garden is not at 
all beautiful. There is death as well as life on 
our white rose bush. The beetle mars the 
beauty of the flower. The aphides feed on the 
very life of the plants. With every flower, with 
every leaf, are born and die the insects that 
inhabit them and feed upon them, and like- 
wise those that eat these insects themselves. 
"A flower which is born and dies is a world 
with its inhabitants." 

Here in my garden I read the story of Won- 
derland. These blossoms on my white rose 
bush are of the universal wonder stuff, and so 
is the worm that crawls upon the leaf. 

It sets me to wondering, which is often the 
same as dreaming. 

Why are all these wonderful things here? 
Have they merely been thrown out by 
an Almighty Hand, or come from some 
one simple potency which works aimlessly, 

[88] 



working simply because it is what we call THE WHITE 
force? ROSE BUSH 

What does all this struggle for existence 
everywhere present in nature mean? Is there 
purpose that justifies and ennobles the strug- 
gle? Why are we here, and so made that we 
must ask questions such as these? 

Do we not find here in my garden something 
prophetic? We see a most wonderful thing — 
the wonder of perpetual renewal. My plants 
seem to yield to winter and death. They give 
up their summer leaves and bury themselves 
deep in the earth. Some do die, but before 
they die they confide their seeds to the earth, 
and behold! when the warm days of spring 
come, here is my garden all alive again with 
the flowers that had seemed to die. The rain 
and the sun and the dew perform their miracles 
before our eyes. 

We look at the worm that eats the leaf. It 
is of an ugly shape and condemned to a mean 
life. It is surrounded by enemies, and man 
will trample it to death without thought. But 
follow its history when it escapes such a fate. 
After a while it spins itself a winding-sheet of 
[ 89 ] 



MY GARDEN silk and incloses itself in it. So far as we can 



see it is dead. But wait a few days and it comes 
forth another creature, clothed in richest colors 
and with brilliant wings. It flies gloriously 
above the earth upon which it had seemed 
painfully to crawl. 

This life which we live here — is it really all? 
Is it the best that we shall know, the best for 
which we are made? 

Do not the higher reaches of life to which we 
have come promise more? May we not hope 
for celestial wings? Is not the butterfly a 
symbol of the soul? 

The rose and the worm and man and worlds 
are all but parts of the Mystery — parts of the 



Plan. 




[90] 



Praise it is enough for me, 
If there be but three or four 
Who will love my little Flower. 

WORDSWORTH 



THE COMMON 
FLOWERS 





A STALK OF 
MIGNONETTE 



A STALK OF MIGNONETTE 

We have stood long before the white rose 
bush. Let us go further. A faint, delicate odor 
lures us to a quiet spot. Here at our feet is a 
plant. Do you recognize it? Yes, your "Bot- 
any" tells you it is "Reseda odorata." You can 
easily recognize it, for it answers exactly to 
the description. 

It is well to keep your "Botany" at hand. 
It will help us to know the plants' standing in 
the scientific world. But the plants have a 
closer relation to humanity, and the common 
names tell us that. 

Let us, then, know this little flower as you 
knew it in your mother's garden. We will 
know it by its fawn-colored spikes and its 
sweet perfume. We will think of it now, not 
as "Reseda Odorata," but as "Sweet Mig- 
nonette," endeared by memories as sweet as 
its fragrance. 
[93] 



MY GARDEN This is a very plain little flower, this Sweet 
OF DREAMS Mignonette, and yet it is one of the most uni- 
versally loved of flowers. Its name means 
"little darling." 

What is it in this plain little flower that 
makes it so universally loved ? 

This question opens up one of the most in- 
teresting and instructive lessons that the gar- 
den has to teach. 

Did you ever stop to think how much the 
common flowers, those that are the lowly 
among the flowers, contribute to the beauty 
of the garden? How much of the grace 
and charm of the whole effect is due to 
them? 

Make a list of the flowers in the most beau- 
tiful garden you have ever seen, and see how 
many of them are of the small and even plain 
kinds as compared with thestrikingand stately. 
Note which of the flowers have most surely 
found a place in our garden of remembrance. 
Recall those we loved most as children and 
have most intimately twined themselves about 
our lives as memories. Recite the old flower 
names and think of the associations that clus- 

[94] 



ter about them. Ask the poets which of the ^ T ?J^;t£r2£^ 
n . ,f MIGNONETTE 

flowers are set as gems in literature: 

"The first snowdrop of the year/' what the 
old herbalist Gerarde calls "the gallant grace 
of violets/' the primroses, "tiny enchanted 
princesses," the daisy, loved by Chaucer, and 
"the wee, crimson-tipped flower" of Burns, 
"the little speedwell's darling blue," cowslip, 
Shakespeare's chosen flower, blue bottles, 
praised by Holmes, brunella, Ruskin's "brownie 
flower," lily-of-the-valley, chosen by an Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, gentian, of which Bryant 
was the friend, harebell, St. Dominic's flower, 
daffodils, of old called "Gregories," because 
the flower of St. Gregory. 

To these add many loved by us in childhood: 
Johnny-jump-up, ladies'-delight, tiny Quaker 
ladies, forget-me-not, buttercups, "spend- 
thrift of their gold," and the little wildlings, 
bloodroot, trillium, windflower, bluets, and 
Lowell's loved dandelion, with its "harmless 
gold." 

"Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold." 

[95] 



^OF DREAMS This Sweet Mignonette itself grows as a 
common weed in Northern Africa, whence it 
came into Italy nearly two hundred years ago, 
to be prized in our gardens as "little darling." 
They were only common wild flowers that 
Jesus meant when He said, "Consider the 
lilies/' but to Him their splendor outshone the 
magnificence of the most glittering of Jewish 
kings. 

How much would be lost if the small and 
lowly of the garden had been left out! I like 
to recall the words of a dear old lady who said 
of her pansies, "I love the little things best 
of all. They look up into the face of their 
Heavenly Father as if they hadn't anything 
to be ashamed of." 

It is not admiration so much as love that 
these simple flowers command. There must be 
something very human in the common flowers. 
There must be a very close relationship, since 
they appeal to something so very deep in us. 

The mignonette has a charm wholly its own. 
We were drawn to it by its delicately refined 
scent. 

To many persons the odor-giving properties 

[ 96 ] 



of flowers are their chief charm. A rose is pre- A STALK OF 
ferred for its perfume more than for its color MIG NONETT 
or its form. Scarcely will they have come to 
a flower before they bend to discover its scent. 

To all lovers of flowers this is one of their 
attractions. An evening in the garden would 
be much less pleasing but for the subtle fra- 
grance of lilies, mint, lavender, rosemary, 
roses, and the sweet scent of the cedars as it 
comes faintly through the twilight. 

This fact is instructive. There is a subtle 
relation between the human soul and the 
senses. It may be called a unity — in some less 
perfect than in others, but always marked in 
the artist. In one the sense of sight most stirs 
the soul to utterance; in another it is sound 
that most reaches the deeps of being; but per- 
haps the least material of things that reach 
the soul through the senses is perfume. 

This, probably more than anything else, 
suggests the thought that the soul of the flower 
is expressing itself in its fragrance. Some one 
has said that "a flower without perfume is like 
a beautiful woman without piety." 

It is true, perfume may be sensuous and 
[97] 



MY GARDEN coarse, but so may be color and sound. Color 
OF DREAMS ma y ^ e strengthened to a painful glare, and 
sound to a torture. 

"There are flowers with a scent so powerful 
as to give an impression almost of intemper- 
ance and voluptuousness." But there are also 
flowers with a scent so delicately refined that 
it suggests a spiritual quality veiled in mystery. 
There are odors that you not so much trace 
like a fact as you accept them as a presence. 

Such is our Sweet Mignonette, and in its 
delicate fragrance is much of the secret of its 
charm. It has eminently the poetic quality — 
chaste, moderate, haunting. 

We will not indulge in moralizing. It is easy 
to fall into the dulness of the mere moralist. 
It is better to let truth speak in its own lan- 
guage in its own way. If this little flower does 
not tell to you its message, none other can. 

And yet, on a bed of sweet odors one is apt 
to dream dreams. 

A sane mind will not "confound a perfume 
and an orison." An esthetic thrill is not an 
aspiration. But the sane mind will be whole- 
somely affected by both. 

[ 98 ] 



Consider the lilies 

JESUS 



A CLUSTER 
OF LILIES 



A CLUSTER OF LILIES 



There are "songs without words." There is 
a speech that is not articulate. " Day unto day 
uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth 
knowledge." It is nature's tongue. 

I have gathered for my beloved a cluster of 
lilies. I cannot translate into our common 
human tongue what they say to me, or will say 
for me. There is an inner ear to which they 
will speak. 

The best most of us can do is to talk about 
the flowers. Happy we if we can understand 
their speech to us. 

Let us linger by this bed of lilies. It is not 
only one of the most beautiful groups in my 
garden, but for many reasons one of the most 
interesting. 

Here are only a few members of a very large 
family. The botanist tells us that there are in 
this family "about two hundred genera, in- 
[ ioi ] 



^OF DREAMS cmcun g more than two thousand widely dis- 
tributed species." 

It is a very old family, and like many other 
old families, its fortunes have been varied. Its 
members have come to exhibit marked differ- 
ences in appearance and differences in point 
of social position. This family includes as 
different flowers as our superb garden lily, the 
tulip, the hyacinth, the trillium, the lily-of- 
the-valley, the star of Bethlehem, Solomon's- 
seal, and many others. 

Most of these retain the great family beauty, 
although some of them live out in the wild. 
Some of their brothers are found among the 
common people of the vegetable garden, where 
they are known as the onion, garlic, and aspar- 
agus. I am not sure that the proud lily would 
own these relations and give them welcome in 
her home among the flowers who acknowledge 
her as queen. And yet, great as are the differ- 
ences, there is still a family likeness, easily 
traced in spite of the differences of raiment and 
the finer beauty of face and figure of some. 

The family has been widely scattered — 
indeed, almost world-wide — and divided into 

[ I02 ] 



many branches, each with marked character- A CLUSTER 
istics. Of these, the most famous, because the ^ F LILIES 
most beautiful, is the Lilium. This branch, 
too, has been broken up into groups, but all 
retain a certain beauty and dignity that set 
them apart. A lily is a lily the world over. 

Some most excellent qualities belong to this 
branch of the family, such as their hardiness 
and constancy of character. These sterling 
qualities make them enduring garden flowers, 
always forceful and strikingly effective. 

Here in this small bed have come together 
relatives from the far corners of the earth. 
We recognize our own Turk's Cap and the 
beautiful Meadow Lily. Here are true orient- 
als, the Speciosums, "of Eastern skies aflame," 
the royal gold-banded Auratum, still a little 
unwilling to consent to naturalization, while 
Elegans lifts her bright face to the sun, and 
the old-time Tiger Lily, with undiminished 
dignity, holds his place in the garden. But 
oldest and loveliest of all is the Madonna, or 
Annunciation Lily. It is a cluster of the flowers 
of this matchless one that I have taken for my 
beloved, for it is, of all my garden beauties, 
[ 103 ] 



^OF DREAMS ^ most P ei "f ect symbol of beauty, and purity, 
and love. 

This water-lily, here in the pool close by, 
is she a sister? The botanist says not, and yet 
we always know her as the water-lily. 

And who would give her any other name? 
True, she is dedicated to the water-nymphs, 
but she has the lily's face and the lily's heart. 
There must be a relationship that the botanist 
has not discovered. None of the family has 
texture more delicate, purity more spotless, 
or beauty more exquisite. Though held to the 
face of the pool, no flower is more kindred to 
the sky. As we look we recall Lucy Larcom's 
fine lines — 

"From the reek of the pool the lily 
Has risen in raiment white, 
A spirit of air and water, 

A form of incarnate light. 
Yet, except for the rooted stem 
That steadies her diadem, 
Except for the earth she is nourished by, 
Could the soul of the lily have climbed to the sky?" 

In art nothing expresses better the spiritual 
quality of this flower than the dreamy, sway- 

[ 104 ] 



ing rhythm of MacDowell's musical tribute ^Jp^USTER 

OF LILIES 

to it: 

"Here by this pool, 
I am aware of the splendor that ties 
All the things of the earth with the 
things of the skies.'' 



Not only because the lily family is so impor- 
tant in point of numbers and influence does 
it interest the botanist so greatly. As a family 
of plants it is of great importance to science 
because it furnishes striking examples by which 
are illustrated interesting facts in plant struc- 
ture, customs of plants, and their history. If 
the purpose of this book were to teach botany, 
it would be a delightful task to write this chap- 
ter of biologic botany, but the writer confesses 
that the lily has another and greater interest 
for him, perhaps because he is not a botanist, 
but only a lover of the flowers, and with a 
special love for the lily. 

The lily is one of the flowers of distinction of 
antiquity. It grew in the classic gardens of pre- 
Christian times. Its very name is of Roman 
origin. We find it described in the oldest 
[105] 



MY GARDEN English herbaries, and grown in the monastic 
OF DREAMS gardens for the decoration of the Church. 

It is pleasant to read that our Anglo-Saxon an- 
cestors loved flowers. These lines are from the 
"Exeter Book": 



"Sweet was the song of the birds 
the earth was covered with flowers 
cuckoos announced the year." 

The enclosures where they grew plants must 
have been very simple, and their knowledge of 
horticulture slight, but the names of plants 
grown by them may be gleaned from early 
herbaries. Some of them are difficult to iden- 
tify, but we are distinctly told that the lily 
was their favorite flower. 

The lily has been a favorite flower in all 
lands and in all times. Its place in legend and 
art is unique. Among the Egyptians the lily 
was deified. Of them the Latin poet said — 
"people holy and happy enough to see their 
gods spring up in their gardens." 

In classic myths the place of the lily is one 
of dignity and honor, while in Christian art it 
is a constant symbol. Heavenly choirs chant 

[ 106 ] 



amid its clustered bells, and many a pictured ^ T 5^H S T X£ R 
saint is ennobled by its presence. 

The lily is the chosen flower of Easter, and 
what symbol more deeply true to the Easter 
story? A bulb, no thing of beauty, is placed 
in the earth, and forth comes a lily. 

But purest and truest as symbol is the Lily 
of the Annunciation. The Holy Mother holds 
to her breast a cluster as she listens to the mes- 
sage of the angel. Chalice of silver for the 
blood of the Christ! 

What dreams men have dreamed since — 

"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the 
sea!" 

Here in my garden — 

"The lilies hold 
Uplifted, each her chalice." 




[107] 



All partial beauty was a pledge 
Of beauty in its plenitude. 

BROWNING 



A DREAM 
OF BEAUTY 



A DREAM OF BEAUTY 

I am in my garden of dreams. The transition 
from the garden of flowers is so easy, so inevit- 
able. 

We are made for dreams. We are full of 
yearnings for the unrealized. The most perfect 
thing on earth does not wholly satisfy us. The 
loveliest flower makes us long for a beauty that 
is not of earth. 

My garden has much of a very lovable kind 
of beauty, but when I most feel its beauty I am 
most sure that this loveliness of sky and flower 
is but a prophecy of a loveliness infinitely more 
lovely. 

Is the flower flawless? This wondrous rose, 
this superb lily, is it perfect? 

It would seem not, for men are constantly 
seeking to improve it, and when we remember 
how many of the wonderful flowers of the 
twentieth century gardens have been brought 
[in] 



MY GARDEN to such perfection within the last fifty years, 
we can understand the passionate quest for 
the perfect flower. 

The science of floriculture has done much to 
enhance the beauty of the garden. Many of 
the most beautiful flowers are products of 
cross-breeding by expert botanists. New flow- 
ers and new forms of old flowers are constantly 
being bred in the hothouses of Europe and 
America. Not only the forms of the flowers, 
but the colors and markings are being changed. 
The skill of the hybridist is adding to our gar- 
dens new delights. 

Look at a bed of Shirley poppies and recall 
how that strain was developed from the one 
white-marked flower discovered by the vicar 
of Shirley in a field scarlet with poppies, if you 
would have some notion of what is being done 
in the way of making the flowers more beau- 
tiful. 

It is well that the amateur take not too con- 
fidingly the descriptions of "novelties" in the 
catalogues of the growers, but to know how 
splendid the novelties sometimes are, you need 
only look at a trellis covered with the orchid- 

[112] 



like bloom of the new Spencer sweet-peas, 
or a group of the Meehan "Mallow Marvels. " 

The quest of the perfect rose, one of the 
"fascinating beyond-the-horizon quests," how 
it has engaged the imagination of generations 
of rose growers! To what enormously expen- 
sive and patient trials it has driven them! 
Labor has been piled on labor to remove " some 
fancied taint in the gold of a yellow," petals 
have been multiplied, colors and shades 
varied, bush roses have been given climbing 
habits, and the seasons have been prolonged 
by inducing perpetual bloom. I need only look 
at my La France or Killarney gratefully to 
acknowledge the debt. 

Doubtless there is danger of spoiling some 
of the sweet things of the garden. No descrip- 
tion of novelties could induce me to permit any 
"improved" varieties to supplant the old 
favorites by association made almost sacred. 
The new may be richer in dress, but they call 
up no memories. They make no appeal to the 
affections as the old ones do. 

Then, too, some of the products of the 
experts are not improvements, while some are 
[113] 



My 9. Ai y? EN grotesque. I confess to an absence of enthu- 
OF DREAMS ° 4 , „ ul , T ^ . , 

siasm over the blue rose, and 1 certainly 

have no desire to possess a "green carnation." 
The modern chrysanthemum exhibition inter- 
ests me, but it does not give me unmixed pleas- 
ure. Chrysanthemums, to be seen only on the 
tables of exhibitors, consisting of one huge 
flower upon one single stem, are, no doubt, 
proofs of great skill in the breeder, but to me 
such a plant, beside the graceful Chrysan- 
themums of the garden, is positively grotesque. 
I sympathize with Miss Jekyll, and with the 
plant, when she says, "To me the plant seems 
always in protest against abuse." 

I recently read an article on " Flowers of the 
Future," in which are foreshadowed some 
marvels. The calceolaria is to be developed 
into "an excellent representation of a tiger's 
head." We are to have dwarf-growing holly- 
hocks and a giant lily-of-the-valley. Think of 
that sweet flower " two feet high " ! The colum- 
bine is to be developed into a marvelous 
"spider flower." 

The writer of the article refers to the little 
veronica and says, "the devout religionist of 

[114] 



the middle ages, fancying he discovered the Q|Pg£j^j 

very face of his Lord gazing at him from the 

tiny azure flower, exclaimed, "It is the Vera 

Icon!" and then the writer asks, "Why should 

not this dim, imperfect portrait be rendered 

by floricultural science more distinct for all 

lovers of flowers and of legend to see?" "And 

this," he adds, "before long will be seen." 

Other new forms promised, "to be seen, 
handled, and smelled by our children or by our 
children's children," are "the mulgas, the 
exquisitely scented jessipas, the great, shell- 
like eupepias, the fantastic pyresas, the cor- 
gonas, the daffobalias, the alterarias, and the 
carminarias." "Who knows," he asks, "but 
that it may be from these forms, as yet only 
dimly foreshadowed to us in the hothouses, 
that the ladies and lovers and poets of the 
future may draw their inspiration, and each 
be, in Dante's phrase, 

" ' . . that flower whom daily I invoke 
Both morn and eve' ?" 

Most of these foreshadowed marvels may 
be no more than the creations of an imagina- 
[ 115 ] 



MY GARDEN tion that would make an interesting magazine 
OF DREAMS art i c i e Interesting it is, but I can imagine its 
author's amusement should we take him ser- 
iously. 

However, we acknowledge a great debt to 
the true seeker of the perfect flower. He is 
working to realize the dream of a perfect 
beauty. It is, indeed, a " beyond- the-horizon 
quest," for still will it be true that, if at last 
produced, the perfect flower will be, like 
Wordsworth's daffodils, transfigured before 
"the inner eye, which is the bliss of solitude." 

The ideal beauty still remains within the 
domain of the spiritual imagination. It is still 
for us a dream. 

"The isles are floating on a 
furlong still before." 

It is a far country — that country where the 
ideal dwells — far beyond widest sea or highest 
mountain, but sometimes, as now in my dream, 
very real. 

How beautiful the dream! In that country 
the flowers do not fade. There every plant 
breathes in a language more noble than poetry, 

[116] 



and more sweet than music, things which no A DREAM 

• OF BEAU1 

human tongue can tell. Man in that land is 

good, noble, and generous. Perfidy, incon- 
stancy, old age, death, or "forgetfulness which 
is the death of the heart," are unknown there. 
Life is more happy there than here dreams can 
aspire to be. There "love in song and beauty 
never dies." Beautiful dream! Happy far- 
away land ' 

May we hope to find it ? Or will the glowing 
light that "keeps itself warm in the heart of 
my dreams" at last fade away into ashen 
gray — "the last still loveliest till 'tis gone, and 
all is grey" ? 

There are times when the fear of it falls like 
a deep shadow upon the heart. There are 
times when drought falls upon our garden of 
dreams, and the blossoms of hope and faith 
droop. But the rains are sure to come again, 
and the very persistency of the dream argues 
its right to expect fulfilment, just as to Brown- 
ing— 

"All partial beauty was a pledge 
Of beauty in its plenitude." 



[ 117] 



I repeat, we are made for dreams. We must 
OF DREAMS . ' . 

continue to dream. 

Does not the very dream help to fulfil itself? 
The difference between the ideal and the real, 
the vision and the fact — to bring these as near 
together as possible is the object of our dreams. 
They give us something to live up to. 

Shall we not bring from the smiling regions 
of dreams brightness into this arid country 
which we call life? And may it not be that 
after that which we call death we shall learn 
that what was really a dream was what we 
called life, while "what we took for dreams 
were excursions which our souls made into 
the beautiful country of reality"? 




[118] 



How sweet the moon-light sleeps 

upon this bank! 
Here will we sit and let the sounds of 

music 

Creep in our ears, soft stillness, and 
the night, 

Become the touches of sweet har- 
mony. 

SHAKESPEARE 



A MIDSUMMER 
NIGHT'S 
DREAM 



A MIDSUMMER 

NIGHT'S 

DREAM 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 

It is not the dream that Shakespeare dreamed. 
We are not at Athens, but in my garden. 

Shall it be a night in June, the time of the 
perfect summer night ? 

"And what is so rare as a day in June?" 

Nothing, unless it be a night in June. And 
yet we will choose a night in August, for 
August is the month of the night garden. 

It is "the night that calms" — a time for 
gentle thoughts and memories. Peace falls on 
mind and body as softly as petals drop on the 
lawn. 

It is now that the garden shows its most 
poetic side. The trees cast etching-like shad- 
ows in the broad moonlight. Fronds gently 
wave, and tendrils sway in the light breeze; 
leaves murmur in tree and bush; perhaps a 
bird twitters love to his mate. Here and there 

[121] 




MY GARDEN shines the little lamp of the glow-worm, and 
the living candles of the fireflies gleam in this 
almost tropical night. It is flooded with a 
moonlight bright and pensive as a silver ocean. 

"Warm and still is the musky eve. 
The moon shines bright in the cloudless sky, 
The crickets sing and the night birds cry." 

The night meaning of the world is being 
written. 

It is a perfect summer night. There was a 
rose-and-gold sunset, and there were poppies 
loose upon the air all the afternoon. May we ex- 
pect to see fairies on this perfect summer night? 

We will stay outdoors late tonight. It is a 
time for dreams, now that "the quiet-colored 
end of evening" has darkened into dusk and 
stars. Everything is "slumberous, and warm, 
and restful," just the time for dreaming. The 
very trees, with the white light streaming over 
them and the black shade beneath, seem to be 
dreaming in this midsummer moonlight. 

One of the mysterious things of the garden 
is the night-blooming flowers. Nearly all 
plants sleep at night. The acacia folds its 

[ 122 ] 



leaves one over another; the blue lupine, which ^jq^^^ MMER 
has leaves shaped like a hand, closes its fingers DREAM 
and lets its arms fall against its stalk; the bal- 
sam drops its leaves toward the earth; the day 
lilies close their blue and yellow flowers; the 
water-lily gathers its petals together even 
before night has come. But the night has its 
flowers which sleep during the day and awake 
while the others sleep. 

The night has also its birds and insects. You 
hear the whistle of the blackbird and the song 
of the robin in the morning — the nightingale 
sings through the night. 

See that large moth hovering over the even- 
ing primrose. It passes by the sleeping flowers, 
over the primrose it hovers and sucks the 
honey from its depths. The moth is not less 
beautiful because it flies only by night. Its 
wings of gray, shaded by browns and blacks; 
its body painted with white, rose-colored, and 
black rings — make it one of the beautiful 
things of the night. 

We think of the night as made to sleep in, 
but the fact is it is full of life and movement. 
Flying wings glisten in the starlight, and out 
[ 123 ] 



°f tne mystery of the dark creep all kinds of 
Or DRJLAMS ! ! t 
shadowy sounds. 

To me the flowers of the night seem to have 
more of mystery and of poetry than those of 
the day. The night invests them with a mys- 
terious and untellable charm, and draws from 
them powerful perfumes of which they are 
utterly devoid during the day. White petunias 
lose their common quality and become exqui- 
site at night. The nicotiana, a disconsolate 
thing by daylight, opens its stars there by the 
side of the evening primrose, making with its 
fellow the most perfect blend of silver and 
gold. How they lure the night moths with 
their radiance and heavy scents! 

There is a giant lily that, by moonlight, has 
a strangely weird dignity, and the little night- 
scented stock, whose dull gray leaves and 
small, dull-colored flowers close and droop 
during the day, as soon as the sun has set opens 
its tender flowers and pours upon the still night 
air the sweetest fragrance. 

There are flowers too fine in their reserve to 
lay open their heart to the garish light of day. 
The lotus flower pines in the sunlight, but 

[ 124 1 



when the Moon God woos her she unveils her A MIDSUMMER 
charms and meets his gaze with kindling eyes. ^m5m^ 

The queen of the night is the moon-flower 
on the lattice, but she needs the breath of the 
night to lay bare her heart. 

" Sweet child of the pale and the passionless Moon, 
Thou art but the Dream of the slumbering Night." 

Poor, indeed, is the life that has not known 
some one love, so deep, so fine, so tender, that 
it lives in the heart of his dream! 

The night garden appeals with a peculiar 
power to the mystic that lives within the soul 
of each one of us. Why is it that we are sure 
to look up to the heavens at night, although 
we may never lift our eyes while the sun gives 
us day? Is it because at night the things at 
our feet are less clearly seen and are therefore 
less insistent? 

The wide sunlight helps us to think of the 
broad, bright, and simple; the night makes us 
feel what is lofty, mysterious, and dim. Gretry's 
words come to mind — "God shuts off this 
world once every twenty-four hours so that 
we can see the universe." 
[125 ] 



MY GARDEN We are hushed by the stars. We are under 
OF DREAMS the speU of the great spaces . 



"High mysteries of Heaven 
Divinely touch us in the great star-blaze. ,, 

The "charmed stillness" of the night brings 
thoughts for which there is no time at midday. 
There is an evening which brings thoughts for 
which middle life has no time. We must have 
left youth behind to come to an understanding 
of things like these. We must come out of the 
day, and 

"In green old gardens hidden away 
From sight of revel, or sound of strife," 

learn the deeper things. 

There is a helpful ministry of the night. 

To know what night does for the flowers, 
go into your garden in the early morning — 
the misty half-hour before sunrise. How cool, 
how silvery white-and-green, how fresh and 
sweet, all things are ! Every little leaf has been 
refreshed in the darkness and has its drop of 
dew as an offering to the returning day. Even 
the old trees look almost young again. 

[126] 



So have I known a soul to pass through its A MIDSUMMER 
night into a new day, refreshed, beautified, and dream 
strengthened for labor, even though the day 
be long, and the sun burning, and the labor 
heavy. 

And the dream this summer night — it is not 
like the fierce desire of the day. It may still 
be a craving, and unsatisfied, but it is a moon- 
lit craving, if a pain — a passionless one. It is 
a soft, moonlit dream. 




[127] 



Autumn dreams . . . 
Brighter visions of peace in the sun- 
set glow, . . . 
Love's beautiful themes that more 

swiftly flow 
From the evergreen heart of the 
Long-ago 

In golden streams. 

DR. B. F. W. URBAN 



AUTUMN 
DREAMS 



AUTUMN DREAMS 



All Saints' summer has come and gone. It is 
the time of bare boughs and empty nests. The 
winds are lifting the fallen leaves and gently 
covering the plants already gone to sleep in 
the border. There are no flowers save the 
sturdy chrysanthemums and one Hermosa 
rose that still blooms in the face of the frost. 
Everything takes up Perdita's cry, 

"The year's grown old." 

Our thought goes back to the blossoming 
springtime and to the "garden glorious" of 
summer. We look back, as man must, to the 
irrevocable past. 

To many these are melancholy days. They 
can think only of "days that are gone." Ten- 
nyson has put into immortal verse this pro- 
found sadness — 
[ 131 ] 



"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean; 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking upon the happy Autumn fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more." 

Another poet strikes a calmer note. Words- 
worth, too, feels the mystery and the pain. 
He, too, looks upon the past with sadness and 
feels the mystery that enfolds him, but he lets 
nature lead him into a calmer mind. 

"My eyes are dim with childish tears, 
My heart is idly stirred, 
For the same sound is in my ears 
Which in those days I heard 



MY GARDEN 
OF DREAMS 



"The blackbird amid leafy trees, 
The lark above the hill, 
Let loose their carols when they please, 
Are quiet when they will. 



"With Nature never do they wage 
A foolish strife, they see 
A happy youth, and their old age 
Is beautiful and free." 

Wordsworth lets the birds teach him wis- 
dom. He knows the sadness of autumn days, 

[ 132 ] 



but, with a philosophy learned from the birds, AUTUMN 
he wins out of the sadness serenity of mind DREAMS 
that is steadfast. Does not the greatest of all 
teachers bid us learn from the same source the 
same lesson? 

With Wordsworth's philosophy, which is, 
in fact, the Christian's faith, I am sure that 
autumn days may bring dreams of hope and 
peace. We may believe with Coleridge in his 
poem of "The Nightingale" that 

"In nature there is nothing melancholy." 

I like these lines of Mr. Austin — 

"Had I a garden, it should grow 

Shelter where feeble feet 
Might loiter long, or wander slow, 

And deem decadence sweet; 
Pausing, might ponder on the past, 

Vague twilight in their eyes, 
Wane calmer, comelier, to the last, 

Then die, as Autumn dies." 

Any one who lives in touch with nature will 
know how surely the feel of autumn comes on, 
and how gently. It comes with August. There 
[ i33 1 



MY GARDEN are still sultry days and close nights, but the 
OF DREAMS j lurr y Q f S p r i n g and the intensity of summer 
are over. Things are ripening. 

There is a growing restfulness as if the zest 
of making bloom and fruit were over. The 
summer apples fall, and here and there are 
already a few yellow leaves on the maples and 
red on the sumac. There is a quiet over nature 
as if softly subdued to the season. 

Then comes a very rush of color. "The 
spirit of the season waves his wand, and the 
world is hung with the richest drapery that 
ever the wizard drew from his enchanted loom. 
It is as if a splendid sunset had fallen down in 
fragments on the earth and set it all ablaze." 

But it is a beauty that subdues. The glory 
of color, orange and purple, scarlet and crim- 
son, grows less and less glorious, but strangely 
more and more beautiful. 

"The year's at rest in the mellow haze 
That crowns with gold these royal days." 

Mysterious and prophetic voices now fill the 
air with the music of elegiac hymns, and again 
with songs of hope and faith. 

[ i34 1 



"You scarce can say 
If it be summer still, or Autumn yet, 
Rather it seems as if the twain had met, 
And Summer, being loath to go away, 
Autumn retains her hand, and begs 
of her to stay." 

But she will not stay. The flowers pass. It 
is true, you may mimic the flowers in wax, you 
may even reproduce their fragrance, but such 
copies smack of embalmment. 

Do we not recognize kinship in the passing 
flowers ? We love the flowers because they are 
so human, changing and passing like ourselves. 
"The unquiet spirit of a flower" is akin to our 
own souls. Its transit leaves us dreaming, it 
may be, of all that might have been, but it 
teaches us the highest wisdom in telling us to 
make the most of life's best moments. 

Thus gently does nature take us in hand and 
slowly teach us, and if we will but learn her 
lessons now we shall be able to receive the 
harder lessons to come. 

For, as we feel the spirit of autumn more, 
the more does its restfulness stir within us a 
strange unrest. With September come vague 
[i35l 



AUTUMN 
DREAMS 



MY GARDEN longings and stirrings. It is sometimes called 
OF DREAMS "melancholy," but it is rather that far-away- 
voices are calling. It is something like the 
migratory instinct in a bird. A strange loneli- 
ness steals over us — a vague homesickness of 
soul. 

How eloquently still and prophetic autumn 
is ! It is the deep rest of nature that stirs within 
us the longings, and the hopes, and, perhaps, 
the self-reproach. 

For autumn is a time of judgment upon our 
work. The gardener understands this well. 
There is in the falling-away of foliage a dis- 
tinctness given to outline that lays bare de- 
fects. Looking back over the garden year we 
can see where the bare spots have been, where 
there might have been constant bloom. In 
some such way the thoughts that come with 
autumn lay bare our lives. 

When nature's workmen have finished their 
work and gone away, we are made acutely 
conscious that there is something that we have 
not finished. 

But autumn has its message of hope, even 
to us, of unfinished work. 

[136] 



There has been death in my garden. Some AUTUMN 
of the plants that bloomed so bravely are dead. DREAMS 
But they have confided their seeds to the 
earth. Life is immortal, though it express itself 
in forms that "perish as the leaves." God 
never wastes anything. All the life has risen 
out of death, and all the death has gone only 
to be made into life again. 

"Death wages not with Nature's heart a 
constant strife, 
But melts that which has served, to 
mould to higher life." 

There are clues to a perception of nature 
that strengthens faith in ultimate good. Like 
Emerson, we may discourse of 

"... the genesis of things, 
Of tendency through the endless ages, 
Of star-dust and star-pilgrimages, 
Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 
Of the old flood's subsiding slime," 

but as Christians we believe in the Over-soul 
and the 

"One far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

[137] 



MY GARDEN Nature has what Carlyle calls her "Darks." 



We walk with the mysteries, and should wear 
sandals. But if man put himself en rapport 
with nature, he will find the eternal harmonies. 
He must listen with bowed head if he would 
hear the Voice that spake in the garden of old. 

It is in such moments that intimations come 
from afar, and kindly voices tell of kinship 
and of Fatherhood. 

The Hermosa rose smiles undismayed in the 
eyes of the frost, and shall not we ? 




[138] 



Nature never did betray 
The heart that loves her, 'tis her 
privilege 

Through all the scenes of this our life 
to lead 

From joy to joy. 

WORDSWORTH 



MY GARDEN 
IN WINTER 




MY GARDEN IN WINTER 



The sky is gray, the earth is covered with a 
sheet of snow. The flowers are dead. The skel- 
eton trees stand out in sharp outline. Cold 
winds sweep up from the valley and across the 
bare lawn. Only the conifers retain their som- 
ber foliage and afford asylum for a few mute 
birds. There is in the air neither the song of 
birds, nor the buzzing of insects, nor the per- 
fume of flowers. Deserted nests, like aban- 
doned homesteads — 

"idly swing 
On naked branch — fond memory 
Of leaf and bloom and Summer song." 

My garden in winter! Is there anything in 
this cold and dismal aspect that I care to write 
about ? 

Yes, the winter garden has a beauty and a 
[141] 



^OF DREAMS P oetr ^ a " lts own > an ^ there are mornings 
when the beauty is so enthralling and the 
poetry so ennobling, evenings when the still- 
ness is so eloquent, that I think my garden is 
never so beautiful as then. There are nights 
when the moon and the frost transmute my 
garden into fairyland. 

It is true, it is a cold and austere beauty, 
this beauty of my garden in winter, but it is 
the very austerity of its beauty that lays upon 
me a spell more potent than the thrall of sum- 
mer days. The enchantment of the winter 
world is very real to the soul that has grown 
into an understanding of its serene, austere, 
untroubled beauty. 

Study the tender color harmonies of this 
picture. The drawing is bold, for "winter is 
no time for petty things.'' But how perfectly 
esthetic the colors! The lavish palette of mid- 
summer is not here, but there is a shy and 
delicate beauty that "veils itself from all but 
the eyes of love." 

Color is never high or garish. The gray and 
silver-gray of bark and lichen, the many tones 
of brown, the softened greens of the conifers, 

[ 142 ] 



and here and there dull reds, these are the color MY GARDEN 
tones. IN WINTER 

With what perfection of art the artist here 
uses color! Soft, dull terra-cottas, deep sage 
greens, with splashes of bronze where the light 
burnishes the trees, tones that remind one of 
the oboes in some symphony. 

What perfection of art in the slender shafts 
of the silver-barked birches against the deep 
tones of the conifers! What in color more 
exquisite and delicately subtle than the pale, 
bluish green of the juniper, or the gray lichen 
on the rugged bark of old trees of this ever- 
green, with here and there, where the outer 
bark has parted, the smooth, dark red of the 
inner bark! Here are "the tints of the snow, 
the earth, and the rocks, made ethereal under 
the somber half-light of a winter day." 

And what shall I say of the trees? The best 
I can say is wholly inadequate, but of this 
winter convinces me — we never really know 
the trees until they have unrobed themselves 
for their winter's sleep. Only then do we see 
how beautiful they are in form, how splendid in 
structure and design, and how graceful in poise. 
[i43l 



^OF DREAMS ^ e ever S reens — do we ever really see them 
— that is, with eyes of appreciation — until they 
remain to us "the one faithful witness to life's 
warmth and brightness"? In the bright light 
of summer we have not looked long enough 
to realize their noble beauty or to appreciate 
their worth. But now — how beautiful with 
their soft burden of snow! What cheer they 
bring to our winter garden! How faithfully 
they have served, and for appreciation awaited 
our time! 

When planning my garden I said, "I must 
have trees, if possible, old trees." Fate was 
kind and placed my garden where already 
some trees had grown to age, one quite old, 
and of all in my garden that I have loved, 
nothing have I loved quite as I have loved 
that old tree. There he stands now, leafless 
and with signs of decay, but still bravely lifting 
to heaven his naked limbs. A recent storm has 
torn loose a great branch. It hangs there as if 
holding on to its place in spite of wounds. But 
the branch is dead. In the springtime I shall 
carefully take it away, but with a feeling of 



[ i44 1 



pain, for the pain of something that seems MY GARDEN 

1 ' i IN WINTER 

almost human. 

For what in nature is so human as an old 
tree around which family traditions cluster? 
What so deeply elemental as the trees? What 
so stirs the heart as their whispering voices 
breathing their mysteries into human ears? 
What so spiritual as the etherealized trees on 
a winter evening when twilight settles down 
cold and still? Never do the trees suggest so 
much of mystery as in winter. 

To see my winter garden at its best, look 
out from my study window some morning such 
as this. 

The frost has decked every tree and plant 
and twig with diamonds. The sun sets free 
the fire of a million gems. Did ever lapidary 
cut a stone with the fire and color of these ? 

Many and various are the moods of my 
winter garden, as many and various as are the 
variations of atmospheric effect and pictorial 
beauty. 

These winter moods are very wonderful — 
now full of tender mystery, again reserved and 
austere, now seemingly hard and pitiless, again 
[i45l 



MY GARDEN serene and passionless, now stormswept, again 
OF DREAMS bright w i t h glorious sunlight, now cold and 
forbidding, again luring us with a warmth of 
touch that promises springtime. 

While something like terror is often felt in 
listening to the winds on a night of storm, 
there is a great restfulness to be had in watch- 
ing a snow-storm. It falls in silence to cover 
with warm blanket the living things in the 
soil. It covers up and tucks in with protecting 
hands while the plants sleep and dream of 
March suns and April rains and May bloom. 

With all its changing moods the winter 
garden has teaching plainly open to the ob- 
servant eye. 

Winter means reserve and withdrawal. 
Some one has said that "no one is ever intim- 
ate with winter." And yet winter has the gift 
of beauty to bestow. Does not many a human 
face receive a finer charm with the frosting of 
the hair? 

To many sensitive souls winter suggests 
nothing but sadness and decay. They see only 
the empty nests and the dead leaves. But do 
not we know that the fledgelings of the deserted 

[ 146 1 



nest are now singing in some far Southland, MY GARDEN 
and that in these midwinter days life is stirring IN WINTER 
beneath the sod, and that new leaves are being 
formed out of sight? 

Winter is a great gardener. At the root of 
the withered stock in my garden he is at work 
forming new leaves and new blossoms. That 
old tree, even now in the very dead of winter, 
as it is called, though bare of leaves, is full of 
life. The sap has sunk down from his bole and 
branches, down into his roots, but there it is, 
ready in due time to ascend again. 

Even now there is distinct promise of sum- 
mer. My plants are growing steadily under 
ground, and I have the certainty that summer 
is coming, and that the good things promised 
will not fail. The mighty Mother stirs in her 
sleep and murmurs. We think of the flowers 
that are unborn. 

The story of the flowers does not end with 
the month of blossoms, but runs on through 
the time of hoar-frost and snow, and on to 
blossoms again. 

Does the snowdrop, that "child of winter," 
tell no tale of immortality to the simple- 
[ i47 1 




"The early shades of night bring near 
The deep content of home and rest 
That lie beyond the even-tide"? 

The bell in the church tower rings to even- 
song. 




[148] 



Here ends My Garden of Dreams, the second in a 
cycle of three Books that have for a central theme 
"the garden as nature under cultivation and 
discipline" and in which the garden is treated as 
a symbol of spiritual and social evolution, the 
whole containing a philosophy of life. The first 
Book of the cycle is The Voice of the Garden, 
published in 1912 by the publishers of this Book. 
The third Book of the cycle is in preparation and 
will be named Garden Philosophy. My Garden 
of Dreams (like the others of the cycle) was writ- 
ten by Abram Linwood Urban. Illustrated by 
half-tones from photographs and decorated by 
Grace Lillian Urban, the author's daughter, the 
whole was done into a Book for Thomas Meehan 
& Sons, of Germantown, Pennsylvania, whose 
large nurseries, founded in 1854 by the late Pro- 
fessor Thomas Meehan, have so greatly contrib- 
uted to the growth in the American people of that 
love of gardens for which the book speaks. The 
typography and binding were designed and super- 
vised by the Service Bureau of the Wm. F. Fell 
Company, who printed the Book, the whole being 
done and completed in the City of Philadelphia, 
in the month of October and the year of Our 
Lord Nineteen Hundred and Thirteen. 



NOV 22 1913 



«!^ Y OF EGRESS 




i 



